


This ain't no place for no hero

by darkmoore



Category: Strike Back
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hallucinations, Hospitalization, M/M, Medical Torture, Non-Consensual Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 17:30:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15393795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkmoore/pseuds/darkmoore
Summary: Michael finds himself at the hands of yet another crazy scientist.





	This ain't no place for no hero

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the "Experiments by evil scientists" square of my h/c Bingo card. It's my first time writing in this fandom, so I'm still finding my footing. Thanks go to my beta, [Brumeier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier) and all the people who have encouraged me to write this. Thank you! It's much appreciated.

Michael was disoriented, which was never good. He couldn’t exactly remember how he had ended up in this room, wherever he was, but he remembered fighting. (We’re always fighting!)

Being outnumbered. (We’ve been outnumbered a hundred times before, Mike!)

Being ordered to leave Damien behind. (It’s okay buddy, I’m gonna be fine.)

Seeing Damien go down. 

Mike tried to free himself, tried to take in his surroundings, plan an escape, but the room was spinning violently around him when he moved his head, colorful auras of light wafting around the few items Michael could make out. 

There was a small window somewhere to his right, high under the ceiling, a crate of some sort in the far corner of the room, an IV stand next to his head, dripping liquid fire into his left arm. Whatever the drugs were being pumped into him, they were potent. 

Slowly, so the room wouldn’t turn into another centrifugal merry-go-round, Michael lifted his head and looked down himself. 

He was strapped to a slightly rusty examination table. The leather cuffs around his wrists weren’t as tight as they could have been, so either his captors hadn’t expected him to wake up just yet, or they thought they had enough additional security measures in place to keep him from escaping. 

(Stop dickin’ around and get out of here, Mike!) The voice in Michael’s head that sounded like Damien was pretty damn distracting. 

“I’m trying, all right?” Michael hissed and yanked roughly at the cuff restraining his right wrist. It gave slightly, but chafed his wrist way more than Michael had expected. It was as if a couple layers of skin were peeling from his muscles. It hurt like hell and sent a wave of nausea though his body, but it also allowed Michael to slip his wrist free. 

He fumbled trying to get the IV line out, fingers too slippery from the blood dripping down from his mangled wrist. 

Before Michael could free his other arm and his legs, the door in the back of the room opened and a man came in. He was short and pudgy with a receding hairline and dark, beady eyes. He wore a white lab coat smudged with something that looked like dried blood. 

Behind him trailed two armed guards and a tall woman in a ridiculous nurse costume. 

“Oh my, what have we here?” short and pudgy asked in mock concern, ticking off another box on the crazy-but-dangerous scientist list. He stayed out of Michael’s reach, as did the two guards, who aimed their weapons at his chest. 

The room around Michael dipped and moved again, spinning in the most nauseating way as colorful dots and swirls danced in front of his eyes, clouding his vision. His wrist hurt like a motherfucker, the needle in his arm still dripped acid down his veins, and Damien was calling him an idiot in his head. 

Michael’s day sucked. 

Short and pudgy moved towards the IV bag and pointed at Michael, like one would chastise a child. “Do not move an inch or my guards will put a round of bullets through your chest, and that would be a terrible waste of a fine specimen such as yourself. It’s regrettable enough that your partner didn’t survive. I can always use more test subjects for my little experiment.”

Michael’s heart skipped in his chest, another wave of nausea rolling through him. Was Damien really dead? Could he believe this guy? (Of course you can’t, don’t be an idiot!)

Michael had a hard time figuring out what to believe or think. 

“I think I need to increase your dosage, and I probably should do some bloodletting. It’s a very old method of draining blood from the body. Too bad I don’t have any of the instruments they had back then. They are works of art.” Short and pudgy sounded conversational as he adjusted the roller clamp on the IV set, speeding up the pace at which the drug entered Michael’s arm. 

Michael was tempted to just make a go for it, try to flee while he wasn’t completely incapacitated from the drug, but he knew he’d never make it out of there alive. His vision was blurry, his stomach roiling, and his whole body hurt. (Oh come on, you’ve had worse!)

“Adjust the restraints,” short and pudgy said, and one of the guards wrapped his arm around Michael’s throat from behind, choking him while the creepy nurse pulled a piece of gauze out of her costume, wrapped it around Michael’s still bleeding wrist, and re-attached the cuff, this time pulling it tight. Michael would have screamed if he’d had enough air, as it was he weakly struggled against his attacker without any success. 

The cuff on his other wrist was pulled tight as well before the hold around Michael’s throat loosened. He gasped for breath, spots dancing in front of his eyes now from lack of oxygen instead of the drugs. 

Michael didn’t know where short and pudgy had pulled the scalpel from, it didn’t matter anyway, but it seemed that the crazy scientist intended to make good on his promise to bleed Michael out. He pressed his fingers into the inside of Michael’s upper arm and made a cut, blood welling to the surface. Michael pulled at his left wrist and pain shot into his fingers and up his forearm, dizzying in its intensity. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” crazy scientist said as he moved towards Michael’s feet. He gripped Michael’s left foot and rotated it outward before placing a deep cut on the inside of Michael’s foot just next to his ankle. 

Michael clenched his teeth and groaned. That was going to be a bitch to walk on if he ever made it out of there alive. Short and pudgy moved to Michael’s other foot and repeated his actions and this time Michael did scream. It seemed that with every second the drug flowed into his body, his skin turned more and more hypersensitive. Or maybe it was coming off his muscles and bones, like it had on his wrist. Michael didn’t quite know. 

“I’m going to leave you to your visitors now,” crazy scientist said with a small smile and patted Michael’s thigh, which sent another jolt of agony through him. 

“Visitors?” Michael managed to ask but no one answered him. They just left him alone.

Michael closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on making a plan to flee. He needed to get out and he needed to get out now. Pain was coursing through him in waves, unlike anything he had ever felt before. It had to be some sort of neurotoxin or something because Michael had been shot, stabbed, burned, and tortured in a hundred different ways but nothing had felt quite like this. 

“I told you to quit, but you wouldn’t. You picked them over me, over us. You picked your job over your wife and son. You let us down, Michael, and where has it gotten you? Stuck god knows where and left to die slowly and painfully. I guess you deserve that.” Kerry’s voice was laden with anger and hate. 

Michael opened his eyes and looked around. She was standing next to him, bloodied dress clinging to her skin, a murderous look on her face. “It’s your fault we’re dead. It’s all your fault!”

“You’re not real!” Michael yelled at her, tears stinging in his eyes. “Go away. Leave me alone. You’re not real!” 

“I’m never going away. You will always have us on your conscience,” she said. 

Michael closed his eyes. He didn’t want to look at her any more, couldn’t bear to give a hallucination power over him. 

“What’s wrong, Mike? Can’t stomach the truth? You fucked me, cheated on your wife, but I was never more than a warm body to you, was I? I was never gonna be enough for you to leave her. She’d still be alive if you had, and maybe I would, too.” Kate’s voice was right next to his ear, so close Michael was convinced he could feel her breath ghosting over his skin. 

“You’re not real,” he repeated, this time nothing more than a whisper. “You’re just in my head.”

Thankfully this time the apparition stayed quiet. 

“An evil scientist? Really? Again, Mikey?” Damien’s voice sounded from the direction of the door. 

Anger welled up in Michael. He wouldn’t let his stupid, drugged brain ruin the memory of his partner; the man he loved more than he had even loved Kerry. “What, are you here to tell me how much you hate me, too? That I shouldn’t have abandoned you? That I should have stuck with you, saved you? That I let 20 take you away from me, too? Save your breath, mate. I’m not listening.” 

Michael turned his head and squeezed his eyes shut more tightly. He wished he could have covered his ears as well. Not that it would have done any good to keep out the images and voices his subconscious dragged up. 

“I have no clue what you’re talking about, buddy, but I gotta say you look like shit.” Damien’s voice was close now and so, so familiar.

It hurt Michael to think about him. Hear him. Scared of what that figment of his imagination would say next. Yes, Michael knew it was the drugs messing with him. He was in pain and confused and his energy was bleeding away through various cuts, and Michael was suddenly very sure that this was how he was gonna die. Alone in some crappy lab, the ghosts of the people he had loved most in his life haunting him. 

“Please, not him, too.” Michael felt his last defenses crumble under the influence of the drug in his system. The noises Damien made as he checked the room, moving closer were so familiar, so real it made his chest ache and his eyes sting with tears. “I’m sorry. But please, please not him, too.” Michael suppressed the sob that wanted to escape, his throat tight with tears, pain crashing over his body like tidal waves.

God dammit it hurt.

The room was spinning again, worse than ever before, vertigo and nausea joining the agony wrecking his body. For the first time in his life Michael felt like he wanted to stop fighting. To give up, succumb to the pain, let the darkness claim him. Dying suddenly didn’t seem like such a bad choice any more. 

“Mike? Mikey? Hey, talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.” The hand that cupped his neck felt real and startled Michael so badly he opened his eyes to look up. Damien was leaning over him and he looked equal parts worried and bewildered. 

“I can’t do this. I won’t. I’m done with this shit. I love you, and I won’t listen to you telling me you hate me.” Anger pushed to the surface again. He knew he shouldn’t talk to this Damien as if he were real because doing that somehow made Damien _feel_ real, too. Michael didn’t think he could take that. “Go away. Leave me alone. You’re not really here; you’re just a ghost.” 

“Shit,” this Damien cursed, and he yanked at the IV line going into Michael’s arm, pulling it out. There was a knife in his hands, cutting off the leather straps and Michael just stared at him, trying to focus on the man moving around him with all the economic precision and grace Michael had come to expect of his partner. It was a hard thing to do, considering the room wouldn’t stop spinning, even if it had slowed down somewhat. 

“I gotta tell you buddy, you’ve picked the strangest moment for a love declaration. We need to work on your timing. Now, I won’t be offended cause I know you’re a little out of it, but seriously, Mikey, you couldn’t have told me the last time you had me up against that wall? Huh?” An arm slid underneath Michael’s shoulders and propped him up. When had the cut in his left arm been covered by gauze?

The room spun again violently and Michael thought that he might be sick; not that he had anything in his stomach. 

“Scott?” he managed. Somehow Michael’s drugged up brain couldn’t keep up with what was happening to him.

“Got it in one, buddy,” Damien answered, and Michael needed a moment to wrap his head around the fact that he probably wasn’t a hallucination at all. 

“Can you stand?” Damien had maneuvered Michael into a somewhat stable, upright position, wrapped some cloth around his ankles, and was now trying to tug him to his feet. Michael’s brain felt like molasses, the funny swirls and dots coming back, dancing around Damien’s head. It would have been pretty if Michael hadn’t felt like keeling over. Black was creeping in at the edges of his vision and being upright worsened the vertigo considerably. He slumped, tilting to one side, but when he tried to stabilize himself his arm gave way, almost sending Michael head first into the examination table. 

“I’ll take that as a no,” Damien commented, and next thing Michael knew Damien hoisted him up into a fireman’s carry that sent shards of pain through Michael’s body. They headed to the door. 

“Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a ride to catch.” Being jostled and pressed against Damien this way as he took off towards their exfil was excruciating, and this time Michael knew he didn’t need to fight the darkness the crept in at the edges of his vision. He gave in and let the blackness claim him.

* * *

Michael drifted awake slowly, the quiet, steady beep of a heart monitor the first thing that registered to him. He opened his eyes and took in his surroundings. He was in a hospital room, late afternoon sun streaming through the partially closed curtains. Next to his bed was Damien, asleep in a chair, dark smudges under his eyes speaking of the kind of exhaustion that came with their job way too often. 

Experimentally, Michael moved and took inventory of his body. EKG electrodes on his chest, blood pressure cuff on the arm that hadn’t been cut up, and the inevitable foley catheter. An IV in the back of his left hand, his right wrist bandaged up thickly, fingers discolored by disinfectant residue. There were bandages around his ankles, and one on his thigh Michael couldn’t remember why he needed. But no pain, just a slightly floaty feeling that spoke of the good drugs.

His memories of his last mission were hazy at best. The last thing that was more or less clear in his mind was the crazy guy cutting him and increasing the dosage of the drug. Everything after that was a blur, a weird mix of voices, faces, emotions. It felt like a half-remembered dream that had turned into a nightmare, leaving a sense of unease behind that had no definite source. Michael hated feeling like that. 

Beside his bed, Damien stirred. He blinked awake and sat up straighter, rubbing his hands over his face in an obvious attempt to clear his head. “Hey Mike, you’re awake,” he said, stating the obvious. Damien had to be pretty damn exhausted. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay. Thanks for getting me out of there, mate,” Michael said, and watched as something flittered across Damien’s face. Michael couldn’t quite decipher the emotion, but Damien didn’t say anything, just looked at him with a fairly unreadable expression. 

“I got your back, Mikey,” Damien said, gaze dropping to his hands for a second. “Docs say you’re gonna be fine. No lasting damage, but that wrist will scar. I brought the antidote of that drug they’d given you, but by the time they’d figured out the right dosage most of the drug was already out of your system and they decided to just leave it.” 

Michael nodded. “How long was I out? I can’t really remember anything after he started cutting me up.” Michael had no intention of telling Damien about weird ghost images he could almost recall seeing, or the prickle of unease that still wasn’t gone.

“So you don’t remember talking to me?” Damien asked, and this time Michael could clearly read the emotions rushing over Damien’s face: surprise and worry. 

“Not really, no,” Michael admitted, and wondered what he’d said that had Damien looking like that. “Problem?” 

“Ah, no, no of course not. You were pretty out of it anyway. How do you always manage to get yourself snatched by the local Dr. Zola? That some sort of special talent of something? We didn’t even know about that guy.” Damien was clearly trying to sound light and teasing, but he missed his mark by about a light-year. 

“Dr. Zola?” Michael asked and frowned. 

“Oh, I keep forgetting that you’re not a Marvel fan. Never mind. It’s not important.” He shifted in his seat, his overly relaxed body language clearly at odds with the tension Michael could see around his eyes and in the tilt of his chin. Something was bothering Damien. 

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on,” Michael said quietly. Damien’s gaze flicked to his. He shrugged. 

“Nothing to tell. All good,” he said, but it didn’t sound convincing. 

“Hey, this is me you’re talking to, mate. I can see right through your bullshit. So why don’t you stop lying to me and tell me what’s going on,” Michael repeated a little more forcefully, and the heart monitor beeped at him in annoyance. 

Damien sighed. “You’re my best friend, Mikey. You know I could never hate you, right?” The fact that Damien sounded unsure when he asked that question made something inside Michael’s chest clench.

“Of course I know that. Why?” Michael suddenly had the suspicion that he’d said something awful while on these drugs. Was that why Damien was acting so weird?

“Nothing, just making sure is all. That one was a close call and I don’t wanna have to break in a new partner to have my back, that’s all.” Damien grinned. Michael almost bought it. But he didn’t have the energy at the moment to pry the truth out of his stubborn partner. 

“Wanker!” he huffed and grinned at Damien. “Why don’t you go home and get some sleep, mate? You look like shit.”

Damien stood and leaned over him, lips brushing Michael’s in a soft, chaste kiss. “I’m home, Mikey. You’re my home.”

“And you’re mine,” Michael replied, a hint of worry creeping up his spine. “I said something while I was on those drugs, didn’t I?”

“Nothing I didn’t already know. Let’s not talk about this right now, okay? You really gotta work on your timing.” Damien grinned at him and winked. 

_I gotta tell you buddy, you’ve picked the strangest moment for a love declaration. We need to work on your timing. _The memory came sudden and hit Michael square in the chest.__

__He stared up at Damien. “I told you that I love you,” Michael whispered. He’d never said it out loud before, but it had always been implied, always been there in actions if not in words._ _

__Damien’s gaze turned soft. “Yeah,” he said. “Told you it wasn’t anything I didn’t know already.”_ _

__He leaned down again and this time Michael slid his left hand over Damien’s neck and pulled him closer, deepening the kiss._ _

__They would talk about this when the time was right, Michael would make sure of it. But until then he was content to let actions do the talking._ _


End file.
